Dribblings and ramblings of a semi-professional railway worker and gunzel type.

WANDERINGS OF A GUNZEL......AIYAHHHHHHHHHH

Yes, the odd rambling from a semi-dysfunctional railway type, both as a professionial-at times debatable...and as a hobby..No perversions mind, only good honest blokey hornbags allowed! After years of travelling in many parts of Asia, any sensible fellow knows, and understands, that they are world's best women! And not to mention some trains of course! These articles come about in a highly sporadic fashion, due to some unpleasent aspersions being cast between the railway hobby, and offences against the underaged.Not to mention a scent of doom laden prophecy, that the world as we know it shall shortly endure! Surely mankind can no longer be allowed to continue it's excesses of greed and consumption on the face of the planet, and nature shall judge us by our actions. The law of cause and effect is being sown with devestating consequences!Ha!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

A scarier, colder vision of the climate change futureBob Beale April 25, 2009

So the sea ice around Antarctica is growing, not shrinking. Hurrah! We're all saved from the misguided, mistaken and self-interested prognostications of those fiendish, bearded, white-coated climate scientists.

Er, no. The sea ice in Antarctica is growing because of the hole in the ozone layer, not because the planet is getting cooler. It's a localised effect, not a planet-wide phenomenon. If it was, the Arctic ice cap would not be shrinking.

In any case, we've banned CFCs, the chemicals that created the ozone hole, so as it gradually repairs, the Antarctic sea ice will shrink again. Likewise, all the soot, dust, smoke, aerosols and aircraft exhaust we've been pumping out have dimmed the atmosphere a little.

In short, science says the muck we have put into the atmosphere has been masking the long-term warming trend. As we clean up our act, it will become more painfully obvious.

Climate change sceptics are in for a rude shock if they seek consolation from Professor Ian Plimer about the threats posed by global warming. A geologist's perspective is cold comfort.

Plimer's much talked-about new book - Heaven And Earth: Global Warming And The Missing Science - may already be a best-seller, but another of his books, A Short History Of Planet Earth , published in 2001, made it plain where he thinks the planet is heading.

He may differ with colleagues about why the climate is changing but he does not contest that it certainly is and even he thinks the consequences are potentially alarming.

Sea levels have been rising in an erratic stepwise pattern for the past 18,000 years, and will continue to do so, according to his earlier book. "In the West Antarctic the recession rates of the fast-flowing rivers of ice indicate a rapid erosion of the slow-moving inland ice sheet driven by the same factors that drove the 120-metre sea level rise over the last 14,700 years.

"It would not be surprising if sea level rose a few metres over the next century causing untold suffering in low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, Holland, north Germany and many non-coralline islands … Low-lying parts of England, where many atomic reactors are sited, will be inundated."

He might have added that fair chunks of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth wouldn't be looking too flash either.

That won't be the end of it. The collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which began about 7000 years ago, means the sea "has another six metres to rise". At least he agrees with the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, on that. Sea levels are not affected when sea ice grows or shrinks, because it's already in the water, but the melting of sheet ice on the land matters a lot.

A six-metre rise will "disrupt coastal populations" and "if global warming occurs and sea level further rises" worse will follow, he wrote, but there's a bright side, at least after the global mayhem subsides. "Warmer, wetter times have led to great renaissances in human history."

No one should be complacent because global warming may, ironically, switch off the North Atlantic Drift. It brings warm water and air to northern Europe, and he warns that its halting may cause temperatures to plunge by more than 5 degrees. Even if that doesn't happen, Plimer has another vision of the future, scarier than that of the climate change scientists.

He uses the history of recent climate change to suggest Earth will "soon lurch into another glaciation, possibly only in 300 or 400 years time but certainly before 2800". The same history shows such a change can occur very rapidly, in less than a human lifetime. "Past ice ages have led to famine, disease, population reduction and warfare, but have not led to the extinction of humans. Depopulation will occur by disease pandemics. As in the past, urban communities will drift into subsistence agriculture and cities will be vacated."

If the next ice age is as bad as the last one, ice sheets - kilometres thick across much of the northern hemisphere - will cover 60 per cent of the land now occupied by humans, and the sea level will drop 120 metres.

Two-thirds of Australia's trees will die. Centuries of cold dry winds will follow. The east coast will be smothered in dust and sand as massive dune fields resume their smothering slow-motion march around the continent's centre.

The abandoned ruins of Sydney will be atop a craggy ridge, overlooking a deep valley where the harbour used to be. A coastal plain will stretch 40 kilometres to the east before it reaches the sea.

Plimer is a geologist and good geology does not make good policy. His vision reinforces the fact that humans are deeply vulnerable to climate. And it underscores our failure to face up to the collective need to change the way we live. We need to keep our options open and give our environment and our society as much resilience as we can muster.

The evidence that humans can change, and are changing, our climate is incontrovertible. The Antarctic ozone hole vividly demonstrates this, but as Plimer says civilisations do exist by grace of geology, subject to change without notice.

This time, though, we have notice. A decade ago, the boffins warned us about future heatwaves, droughts, severe weather and loss of sea ice in the Arctic. Where will we be in 10 more years?